Magic City Brewfest offers an unparalleled selection of Alabama beers

Free The Hops President Gabe Harris looks for a place to hang a banner as preparations got under way for the 6th annual Magic City Brewfest presented by Free the Hops at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham on Friday. (The Birmingham News/Jeff Roberts)

If this past weekend's Magic City Brewfest at the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham showed me anything, it's that Alabamians are downright voracious when it comes to local craft beer. How else do you explain the lines all day long — often 20 to 30 deep — at every one of the state's eight brewery tents, while you could pretty much walk up and get a taste from such notable out-of-state breweries as Green Flash, Avery, SweetWater and Founders?

As I witnessed this over and over again Saturday, often from the vantage point of the waiting masses, it dawned on me — Alabama's beer scene has arrived.

Eight breweries pouring more than 60 different beers, all made in Alabama. To my knowledge, that's the largest selection of state-brewed beer ever served in one place.

It's still sinking in.

And when I say different beers, I mean different beers. Peanut Butter Porter? Brett IPA? Russian Imperial Stout aged in various liquor barrels? These are the kinds of brews that were once relegated to the experimental fringe of craft beer. You know, crazy wild-eyed brewers in far-off places like Portland, Ore., and Northern California, making beers we'd never get to try unless we traveled there. Certainly not in Alabama, where, just a little over three short years ago, you couldn't even buy a beer with more than 6 percent alcohol by volume.

But here they were, our own cadre of crazy brewers willing to take a chance that the state's beer-drinkers will appreciate the effort and ingenuity they put into each batch. That appreciation could not have been more evident Saturday.

Sure, we've got plenty of room for growth, especially here in south Alabama, where the closest state brewery is more than 250 miles away in Birmingham. But we get a lot closer with each brewfest, each new brewery, each delicious sip of an unfamiliar beer by an unsuspecting drinker who proclaims, "This is good!"